Don't lie to anyone, but particularly don't lie to millennials. They just know. They can smell it. Be yourself: if you're old, be old. If you don't know anything about pop culture, don't pretend to know anything about pop culture. When you credit teenagers with intelligence and emotional sophistication, they respond intelligently and with emotional sophistication.

And as paralyzing and upsetting as all the never agains were, the final leaving felt perfect. Pure. The most distilled possible form of liberation.

I do not say goodbye. I believe that's one of the bullshitiest words ever invented. It's not like you're given the choice to say bad-bye, or awful-bye, or couldn't-care-less-about-you-bye. Everytime you leave, it's supposed to be a good one.

but there was nothing I could do to dim the supernovae exploding inside my brain, an endless chain of intra cranial firecrackers

I hope we get pulled over, he says. I'd like to see how the cop responds to a black man wearing a Confederate T-shirt over a black dress.

I realized during my time as a chaplain that I didn't want to be a minister.

You see how fake it all is. It's not even hard enough to be made out of plastic. It's a paper town.